


take one last look at this sacred heart

by felinedetached



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Introspection, Self-Reflection, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felinedetached/pseuds/felinedetached
Summary: It’s a weird day, the day you become his partner.





	take one last look at this sacred heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Everybody Knows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLOt5P6nSk)

**Codependency.**

_Noun._

A learned behaviour that can be passed down from one generation to another. It is an emotional and behavioural condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.

 

* * *

  

_"Because we're caught in a loop, Valkyrie and I. A very destructive loop." - Skulduggery Pleasant, pg 163 of Resurrection_

 

* * *

 

It’s a weird day, the day you become his partner. You’d just inherited a mansion from your uncle, a crazy person who was immune to fire had just tried to kill you, and you’d fainted into the arms of a skeleton. Nowadays, that wouldn’t bother you as much - honestly, you’ve fainted on Skulduggery a few times now.  
  
(You’re only partially lying - people try to kill you all the time, and so you’re not _really_ bothered by that anymore, but people you care about also tend to die a lot, and you will _never_ not be bothered by that. At least, you _hope_ you’ll never stop being bothered by that. Darquesse wasn't bothered, and that's almost the scariest thing about her.)  
  
Threatening to step on his hat if he didn’t take you with him is a memory you view often with fondness, and sometimes a bewildered sort of annoyance and embarrassment. Irritation, almost (at yourself, and at Skulduggery for letting you, because now you know he could have easily taken it from you without harming you. You were _twelve,_ for fuck's sake). You wouldn’t have ever thought you’d regret it at the time, or during any of the subsequent six years, but you haven’t been around him for a while now. Perhaps some of the charm is wearing off.  
  
That would be almost as odd as your partner himself; almost as odd as the day you became his partner. The charm of magic and mystery and things you could never have even dreamed of, wearing off? And yet here you are, staring at Skulduggery as he asks you for twenty-four hours, and then twelve more, and then twelve more again in a desperate bid to keep you by his side.  
  
As much as you couldn’t live without him then, he can’t live without you now. You’ve both tried; you both did things with your life. Or, well, you moved to a farm, brought a dog, lived off your uncle’s inheritance and almost got your grocery boy killed. He became the head of the sanctuary guard, and did many other amazing and wonderful things. Things that you would have done together, once upon a time. Things that you can do together now, if you accept his offer.  
  
You think, perhaps, that it’s less an inability to live without you (which doesn’t even make any sense, he’s a skeleton) and more the fact that he doesn’t want to live without you. You’re almost not sure what’s more flattering.  
  
Getting in his car is like coming home. You hate it. What you had, way back when, wasn’t healthy. Neither of you really knew it - or acknowledged it, for that matter - but he seems to be trying to be responsible now (or so you think, until he drags a fourteen-year-old into this fight and you argue against it, superficially, because you were only twelve when you made him take you on and wow Valkyrie, that’s a little hypocritical isn’t it?) but now you’re both dancing around an issue you’ve acknowledged but not faced.  
  
It’s called codependency, in psychological terms. A codependent relationship. They’re unhealthy, of course, and typically characterised by one member encouraging or enabling the other; but you and Skulduggery have always been weird and here it is only in that you encourage and enable each other.  
  
It started out textbook - of course it did, you were twelve, what was there that you could enable - and Ghastly tried to point it out, tried to help, but after awhile he, like so many, began to see only the good.  
  
And there was good, of course there was. He was good for you, you were good for him. He taught you so much, and you like to think that you taught him some things in return, but honestly? You didn’t. Not at first.  
  
At first, you learnt from him, became better under his tutelage. He opened up (you remember China and Ghastly and Tanith and Kenspeckle as they all told you that and as two told you to get out and run) and so did you, even though most of them (all of them) hadn’t known you well enough previously to comment on that.  
  
You left behind a life and a family for Skulduggery Pleasant, and you don’t regret a moment, but you think, perhaps, that maybe you should at least try to make this relationship better than it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on my tumblr [@faeflowerfeline](https://faeflowerfeline.tumblr.com/)


End file.
